OK, now I know there are a lot of sites out there that map hotel and lodging information for trip planning, but I just had to do a quick post (while we’re packing up our lab for the move) about TvTrip, a European travel site that not only maps hotels in several major cities in Europe, but also offers you the opportunity to watch videos of the hotels. It also has a cool slider bar for you to set your price range. It’s actually a pretty cool idea and, if other sites haven’t picked up on the idea, I’m sure they will be soon. All I do know is, the movers are coming to get our computers and desks to move to our new building on Monday, and I have spent half the afternoon watching videos of hotels in Berlin and Madrid. Oh well. TvTrip only seems to have 5 cities right now: London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Berlin, but if you’re traveling to any of those cities, you might want to check it out.

The online version of the latest issue (July/August 2007) of Technology Review has a fairly comprehensive article by Wade Roush about Second Life, virtual globes, social mapping, and the prospects for merging geospatial technologies and virtual world to create a Second Earth. None of the topics is especially new, but Roush does a good job of providing an overview of the various technologies and players. The main focus of the article, though, is to discuss the possibility of a Second Earth or metaverse and how that might come about. Roush starts off with the most obvious possibility, combining Second Life and Google Earth, but notes that both Google Earth and Linden Labs deny they are working on it. All in all, the article offers a nice synthesis of what’s going on in relation to the development of the metaverse and the convergence with geospatial technologies, and some intriguing possibilities for the next step.

I ran across this site today via Digg – Find your local Recycling station! I checked our area and the data is rather mediocre at best. It has the commercial sites but none of the county wide sites that are maintained. Barb works with our county recycling authority, so I’ve had a pretty good chance to get acquainted with the business. Hopefully their data is a little more robust in more urban areas. It’s a great idea that I hope grows and grows!

I am desperately trying to get through all the email that has piled up while we were on the road, and I had to do a quick post about this site that our reader Elaine alerted me to. It’s called Local Harvest, and has a nice Google Maps mashup feature that lets you see where the local farmers’ markets, groceries, co-ops and farmers that sell local foods and produce, including organic, are located. So, if you like to take advantage of local foods and farmers, definitely check out Local Harvest.

I will hopefully be catching up on some other cool things I want to post, some from ISDE5 and the ESRI UC, and a couple of other projects I really like.

The Age is reporting that the terrorists plotting to blow up JFK airport in New York may have used Google Earth in their planning. As the article states, less than a month ago, the head of the NGA offered the opinion that the US government should consider censoring satellite photos. Certainly any tool can be used for both good and evil, but hopefully this latest revelation won’t have a negative impact on the emergence of these open tools.

The success of web mapping applications does, of course, have its drawbacks. Case in point – GeoSelector. This new mapping tool from DirectMail.com lets users define a targeted audience for direct mailings based on location and demographics and boasts a database of 220 million consumers in 110 million households. GeoSelector is built on the GoogleMaps platform, and includes added layers such as school and voting districts and census tracts. You can access GeoSelector for free, and once you have your targeted location area, you then order mailing lists based on your selection criteria (you do have to pay for the lists).

Of course, the use of geodemographics for targeted marketing is nothing new, but GeoSelector certainly lowers the bar in terms of getting access to these tools.

I haven’t posted about a Google Maps mashup in awhile, but this one, called Putting Nanotechnology on the Map, offers an interesting perspective on where nanotechnology research hotspots are located in the US, including universities, private companies and government facilities. Some of the centers, like the San Francisco Bay area, are no surprise, but I was kind of amazed by the number of companies and universities that are engaged in nanotechnology research and business in places I wouldn’t necessarily think of, like Montana or Idaho.

Ever wonder how accurate that phrase, “It’s going around” really is? Well now you can figure it out with Who is Sick? This is sort of epidemiology amateur style. Anyone can post their symptoms along with where they’re located. So if you’re feeling a tad under the weather, give the site a shot and see if whatever you have is “going around” in your area.